ELL News Headlines

Students want teachers who are emotionally present, empathetic to their experiences and who invest in their well-being and success. Teachers crave those same things — empathy, support and investment — from families, school and district leaders and the public. In my experience, there's an empathy gap for teachers. What I didn’t recognize or acknowledge is that this has created an empathy gap for students as well. That’s a realization I didn’t come to until hearing a student’s perspective on the issue.

Communities In Schools, the national organization that provides wraparound services to students in high-poverty schools, will receive up to $165 million from the Ballmer Group, the largest gift in the organization's 45-year history. The latest gift from the Ballmer Group, which was founded by Connie and Steve Ballmer, will go toward taking the Communities In Schools' student-support model to 1,000 more schools, both in new locations and in places where the organization already operates. Steve Ballmer is the former Microsoft CEO.

Roxana Alvarado Martinéz, a high school sophomore, had told only close friends she was seeing a therapist to help her with anxiety and insomnia. But that changed last month in the civics classroom where she serves as a teacher’s assistant. The teacher plucked slips of paper from the “Sol y Nubes” — sun and clouds — box, where students can anonymously share struggles or excitement. That day, as the discussion touched on depression, bullying, and suicide, Roxana spoke up.

Anthony Vargas listened intently as a young student launched into her presentation on the Navajo Code Talkers, a group of American Indians trained and recruited to relay secret messages in battles during World War II. Vargas, the district's supervisor of gifted and talented and advanced programs, understands all too well the importance of recognizing the talent and value of historically underrepresented groups. It's why he's worked diligently over the last four years to increase the number of Hispanic students and those from economically disadvantaged backgrounds in the district's gifted and talented program, which skewed white and upper income even as students of color and those from low-income households made up a majority of the district's enrollment.

Before taking Arabic language classes at Denver’s North High School, Rachel Saghbazarian had to communicate with her grandmother in Lebanon using what she called broken English. Her father often had to serve as interpreter — and too many times, thoughts were lost in translation. Now, a year after starting the classes taught by Mohamed Moghazy, Rachel hopes to be able to revisit conversations asking her grandmother — in Arabic this time — what it was like to relocate to Lebanon after fleeing her war-torn home of Armenia.

It’s presentation day in a fifth grade classroom at Vang Pao Elementary School in Fresno, and some students are more shy than others. But 11-year-old Irene Her stands in front of the classroom, confidently weaving Hmong words together to talk about the “lub vab,” a basket tool used in the Southeast Asian culture. Irene is among the inaugural class of students who began kindergarten in Fresno Unified’s Hmong Dual Language Immersion Program in 2018. Billed as the most extensive of its kind in the nation, the program is building up each year, welcoming new students into TK and kindergarten, while the other classes move up.

Natalie Griffin’s surprise pregnancy at age 15 could have derailed her high school career. Instead, it forged her into the obstacle-defying educator she became decades later.

Between an influx of school-age Spanish-speaking students relocating to Florida and the state’s ongoing teacher shortage, the need for evidence-based educational practices benefiting English learners is greater than ever.

It’s a resource gap that four UCF researchers hope to help fill through a new project called the English-Learner Infused Training and Experience Program for Early and Primary Learning Educators (ELITE).

The American Library Association (ALA) announced the following Pura Belpré awards for two titles published by LEE & LOW BOOKS INC.: Where Wonder Grows illustrated by Adriana M. Garcia as the 2023 Pura Belpré Youth Illustration Award winner, and Still Dreaming / Seguimos soñando illustrated by Magdalena Mora as a 2023 Pura Belpré Youth Illustration Honor Book.